APP OF THE DAY: Dragon's Lair review (Android & iOS)

One of the oldest games in the business is now available to play on just about all of the world’s smartphones. At 28 years of age and counting this, at the time, ground-breaking animated role-play adventure has still just about got it and at the least should bring you enough of a nostalgia hit to make up for what it might lack in modern day devoping genius. What is the game? Why, of course, it’s...

Dragon’s Lair

If you didn’t get a chance to play Dragon’s Lair on Laserdisc, Amstrad, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari, Amiga, NES, Gameboy, Super NES, Xbox or just about any other platform that’s ever existed, then a) where were you and b) well, now is your chance.

It’s a classic and tight little storyline. You play the heroic but rather bumbling cartoon knight Dirk the Daring as you battle your way through a magic castle to find Singe the dragon who’s captured the Princess Daphne. Not exactly complicated and neither is the gameplay.

Instead of controlling Dirk directly, the game is really more of an interactive animated story with the player required to hit the right on-screen buttons at the right time to stop our man from meeting a sticky end. If you miss, you reappear instantly at the entrance to each room and, because of it, the game takes on a fairly relentless feel. As a result, you only need about half an hour to finish the thing.

It’s not a problem having to use touch controls but, because you have to keep your eyes on them so keenly, it does rather mean that you can’t relax and enjoy the animations which is a bit of a shame. All the same, Dragon’s Lair is amusing enough for the 59p charged on iOS but the Android price is currently a bit of a rip off. Sure, it’s repetitious and a bit silly but at least you’ll be able to say that you finally played the thing, and finished it too.

Instead of controlling Dirk directly, the game is really more of an interactive animated story with the player required to hit the right on-screen buttons at the right time to stop our man from meeting a sticky end. If you miss, you reappear instantly at the entrance to each room and, because of it, the game takes on a fairly relentless feel. As a result, you only need about half an hour to finish the thing.

It’s not a problem having to use touch controls but, because you have to keep your eyes on them so keenly, it does rather mean that you can’t relax and enjoy the animations which is a bit of a shame. All the same, Dragon’s Lair is amusing enough for the 59p charged on iOS but the Android price is currently a bit of a rip off. Sure, it’s repetitious and a bit silly but at least you’ll be able to say that you finally played the thing, and finished it too.